Important points:
1. Veux is a verb form of voulour, meaning ‘to want’.
2. The second verb in a sentence always takes the infinite form (the form it appears in the dictionary) – which is rather convenient. Hence, je veux boire (I want to drink). ‘I drink’ will translate to je bois.
3. In French, you are never hungry or thirsty. You always have hunger (J’ai faim) and thirst (J’ai soif). Note that J’ai => Je + ai. French has many such contractions. That's what makes the language flow so freely. The 'e' of the last word always disappears when followed by a word starting with a vowel. ai is a verb form of avoir, meaning ‘to have’.
4. The tiny letter ‘y’ is perhaps one of the most used word in French. It mean ‘there’.
5. You will find the phrase ‘il y a’ very frequently used. Its literal translation is ‘he there has’, but it is always taken to mean ‘there is’ or ‘there are’.
6. Un stands for ‘a’, so does une. Un is used in front of masculine nouns, une in front of feminine: une maison (a house). There is no rhyme or reason why a word is masculine and another feminine.
7. Did you notice how the 's' of allons went and got attached to 'y'? This is another of that smooth-flowing language trick used by the French.

Sunday, April 8, 2012

All language learning books that I have come across, teach languages in slightly different order from how we would speak. This caused me lot of frustration because I could not begin to speak soon enough.

You see, the books first address the present tense completely and then move on to the past tense and final to the 'future' tense. Unfortunately that is not how we speak.

You: "Super! Great!" (Soopair)
***
As you can see, even in the first conversation we mix up the past and the present. It is a necessary part of any conversation. A delayed learning of the past tense prevents you from useful conversation.
Since you and the girl are using the ‘tu’ form, it is worthwhile noting what the formal form would be for the following:Combien de temps et-tu à Paris ? => Combien de temps êtes-vous à Paris? Je peux te montrer Paris le week-end. => Je peux vous montrer Paris le week-end.

A couple of pronunciation tips:
Whenever you encounter N, go nasal.
Keep your "t" and "d" soft. The trick is to keep your tongue at the base of upper set of incisor teeth.